cover image Rough Mix

Rough Mix

Jimmy Bowen. Simon & Schuster, $24.5 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-684-80764-5

Dirt on the stars, melodramatic yarns about the origins of favorite records and the exact amount of money famous people make--Bowen knows what pop music lovers want from an insider's account. As a producer and record company executive, Bowen takes credit for reviving the Rat Pack's flagging careers in the wake of Beatlemania in the late 1960s and for spearheading the move to modernize country music's sound in the '70s and '80s, thereby making superstars of George Strait and Reba McEntire. Bowen gets away with these unflinching boasts because he attributes his achievements to luck and common sense rather than genius. His career has been impressive, allowing him to cross paths with a staggering number of 20th-century pop legends. He performed on bills with Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Chuck Berry in the '50s, produced in the studio adjacent to Phil Spector's in the early '60s and commissioned the writing of ""Strangers in the Night"" for Sinatra. Although the musical innovator breaks no ground in the celebrity autobiographical form (he describes his finest hours matter-of-factly), he emerges as a gracious, very talented man who was in the right place and right time. (May)